GATINEAU, QC, October 29, 2018 – Businesses have new obligations under breach of security safeguards rules coming into force this week, says the federal Privacy Commissioner.Changes to Canada’s federal private sector privacy law will require organizations to report certain breaches of security safeguards to the Commissioner’s office and to notify those affected.“The number and frequency of significant data breaches over the past few years have proven there’s a clear need for mandatory reporting,” says Commissioner Daniel Therrien. “Mandatory breach reporting and notification will create an incentive for organizations to take security more seriously and bring enhanced transparency and accountability to how organizations manage personal information.”The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has published guidance to help businesses comply with the new requirements as well as a new reporting form.The final version of the guidance was developed following a public consultation. The Commissioner’s office received 20 submissions from various sectors on a draft version of the guidance. The Commissioner thanks those who provided their feedback.Under the new regulations for organizations subject to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which come into force November 1, organizations must:

Report to the Privacy Commissioner’s office any breach of security safeguards where it creates a “real risk of significant harm;”

Notify individuals affected by a breach of security safeguards where there is a real risk of significant harm;

Keep records of all breaches of security safeguards that affect the personal information under their control; and

Keep those records for two years.

Commissioner Therrien called the regulations “imperfect but a step in the right direction.”He has raised concerns that the reporting requirements fall short in that, for example, they don’t ensure that breach reports to his office provide the information necessary to assess the quality of organizations’ safeguards. As well, the government has not provided the Privacy Commissioner’s office with resources to analyze breach reports, provide advice and verify compliance. As a result, the office’s work will be somewhat superficial and the regime will be less effective in protecting privacy.About the Privacy Commissioner of CanadaThe Privacy Commissioner of Canada is mandated by Parliament to act as a guardian of privacy in Canada. The Commissioner enforces two laws for the protection of personal information: the Privacy Act, which applies to the federal public sector; and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, Canada’s federal private sector privacy law.- 30 -For more information, please contact:Office of the Privacy Commissioner of CanadaTobi.Cohen@priv.gc.ca819-994-5689

Buyers in a cancelled Vaughan condo project are asking a court to declare their contracts void so they can sue the developer for the appreciation they lost in the two years between when they bought the pre-construction units and when their deposits were returned.

A class-action lawsuit can take years to work through the courts, said the buyers’ lawyer Ted Charney. But this legal application will likely be heard within four months, he said, because it is going through the Ontario Superior Court of Justice Commercial List, a specialized court that handles business matters.

If the application succeeds, Charney says it will put developers on notice that they must stay within those contract rules, even in the kind of heated real estate environment that the Toronto area experienced when the Cosmos units went on the market.

The court action comes amid calls for greater consumer protection for home buyers who face having their deposits tied up for years, only to have the money returned after the cost of similar homes has increased.

Liberty Developments sold Cosmos units in the spring of 2016, when the average price of a highrise condo in the GTA hit about $461,000 in April. When Liberty cancelled the project this past April, that average price had soared to almost $740,000, according to the Building and Land Development Association.

Liberty Development is named on the court application, along with three numbered companies that share the same Markham address. The companies have 45 days to respond to the application. Liberty did not respond to the Star’s repeated requests for comment through its media spokesperson.

Eleven projects with 3,992 units have been cancelled since the beginning of 2017, according to Urbanation, a market research company.

Cosmos buyers signed “take-it-or-leave-it” contracts that gave the vendor, one of the numbered companies, “sole, absolute and unfettered discretion,” to cancel the project if it found the financing terms unacceptable, said Charney.

He compared it to someone making an offer on a house conditional on mortgage financing. “Then if (the buyer) want(s) to drop the deal all they have to do is say, ‘I didn't like the mortgage rates or I couldn't get the mortgage I wanted, see you later,’” he said.

Charney is among those who say developers should have a limited period -- 90 or 120 days -- in which to cancel projects. If they exceed that time limit, he says, they should have to pay buyers the difference in the property’s value.

Liberty has said that it cancelled the project “solely due to the inability to secure satisfactory construction financing.”

It told buyers that the decision was made by vendors. The court application says those vendors are among the numbered companies named on the court application. Darvish Fereydoon is the director and the president of all the companies named on the buyers’ court application.

In April, the company’s spokesperson Danny Roth of Brandon Communications called the Cosmos cancellation an “isolated” event.

The court application notes that Liberty is now planning a new condo project adjacent to the Cosmos site at Vaughan Metropolitan Centre and it is redeveloping the Promenade Mall near Bathurst St. and Clarke Ave. in Vaughan with 1,006 condos in three towers, a hotel and commercial space.

Liberty Development has filed a $1 million defamation suit against Charney, claiming he published “false and defamatory words” about the company on a website designed “to entice hundreds of purchasers to sue Liberty with a false statement as to Liberty’s involvement in the cancellation of the Cosmos condos project.”

Real estate lawyer Bob Aaron, who writes a column for the Star, agrees with Charney that there should be a finite period in which developers can cancel sold projects. The problem is that developers have to pre-sell condos to finance the projects. To change the system there would need to be a period in which sales and financing could be arranged at the same time, he said.

Even though many condos sell to investors who never plan to live in them, the government owes all buyers greater protection.

“Right now there's a loophole in the legislation which allows builders on the flimsiest of excuses to terminate deals when the values of properties have gone up. That does not protect consumers in a rising market,” said Aaron.

Buyers pick up the pieces after condo cancellation

The price, the parking and the proximity to a new subway station at the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre helped the Cosmos condo development sell out in the spring of 2016.

When Liberty Development cancelled the project in April, some purchasers bought other homes. But some say they have been pushed off the property ladder in a tough GTA housing market where their refunded deposit checks simply don’t buy much two years later.

Jay Reddy bought his Cosmos unit as an investment. He planned it as a retirement place for his mom, 70, and dad, 76, who had planned to sell their house.

“For them to live in a four-bedroom house in Vaughan and keep up with everything outside and inside, it was just becoming too much,” Reddy said.

But now, they’re staying.

“They’ll probably just wait and see if it’s worth it to relocate to somewhere in Vaughan condo-wise. My guess is they’ll probably just have to stay there for now,” he said.

“A lot of these condos in Vaughan are just skyrocketing in price. Cosmos was offering parking, the location was better as opposed to further up Jane north of Hwy 7. When we went to the open house, we felt comfortable with what was being offered,” said Reddy, 41.

“Four people that I know of either bought a townhouse or a condo. A lot of them had to go to Etobicoke. A lot of them couldn't stay in Vaughan.”

Reddy is one of a group known as the Cosmos 8 that maintains a Facebook page and helped organize a court application by 451 buyers against Liberty Development.

Their lawyer says there were investors among the 1,100 buyers of the cancelled development, but the 451 purchasers he represents are not offshore high rollers. “For most, it was going to be their major rental property or it was going to be their home,” Ted Charney said.

Here’s where the Cosmos cancellation has left some other buyers.

***

It should have been an evening of joyful anticipation when Julia Notarfonzo arrived at her parents’ Woodbridge home on April 6, the night before her wedding. Instead, the bride noticed that her dad appeared anxious.

“The night before your wedding you're just thinking, ‘OK, we have our life set up, we're going to get married, we're going to move into our place, everything's going to be great.’ And then it's just like, where do we go?” said Notarfonzo.

It wasn’t her first disappointment with a pre-construction home. Before buying at Cosmos, she had invested in another project that was rezoned, adding $70,000 to the price, so she walked away. When her relationship with Loiacono became serious, the pair decided to buy jointly in 2016. They were living together in a rental and expected to get married and move into their condo. The Cosmos location allowed them to maintain only one car, which Notarfonzo would use for her teaching job while Loiacono could take the subway to work in a downtown bank.

“I had already invested when I was 23 years old. It didn’t work out,” said Notarfonzo, 26. “I worked so hard for that money, extra jobs, tutoring, working at a grocery store. I got screwed twice pretty much.”

After buying their condo in the spring of 2016, “we watched the whole GTA housing market boom at a crazy pace,” said Loiacono.

The couple have since purchased a 17-year-old stacked condo townhouse in North York for $665,000.

“It is a happy ending, except I paid $200,000 more,” said Loiacono, who says he would never again buy a pre-construction home.

“Other people are back to square one and a $70,000 deposit might not be able to get them something they want anymore.”

***

Ina Cici was living with her parents when she bought a 638-square-foot, one-bedroom-plus-den Cosmos unit at the end of her first year as a full-time teacher.

As soon as she signed the contract, she took on extra tutoring work to pay back the deposit money she had to borrow from family.

Two years later, when she got the Cosmos cancellation letter, Cici, 26, thought she was the victim of a scam.

“All along, I thought everything was OK. I couldn't believe it,” she said. “Because the market had changed so much in two years, I felt ripped off. I felt I was being played with. They were keeping my money until the real estate market went higher and higher.”

Now Cici sees herself remaining in her parents home and potentially having to move out of the Toronto area if she wants to own her own place.

She continues to search. Recently, she looked at a Toronto condo plan. The only comparable unit in terms of price was $397,000 for 380 sq. ft., she said. Unlike the Cosmos apartment, this one had no parking. Cici says tighter mortgage rules are also making it tougher to buy.

“I honestly feel like nothing that is affordable is livable anymore -- 380 sq. ft. is a box,” she said. “I could pay for it, but it’s just not livable. It doesn't excite me at all.”

Cici figures that she would need a family member or co-purchaser to afford something comfortable in the Toronto area.

“I don’t think one person alone can afford a house anymore, and it sucks.”

“Unfortunately, all the places have gone up in price,” he said. They have been checking out new developments in Etobicoke.

The summer has given him time to reflect on the Cosmos cancellation, said the 33-year-old teacher.

“Being able to sit back, I realize how much damage it’s done,” he said. “We bought that place for $280,000, which was a pretty good price in 2016. In those two years, prices have gone up 30 per cent. Now we've got to put down a bigger deposit. Now we're going to be paying $300 or $400 more a month on the mortgage.”

He’s also noticed that the 600-square-foot, one-bedroom unit he bought in Cosmos for $280,000 looks different in other developments.

Now, he says, buildings are configuring two bedrooms into the same space, and “you’re paying $200,000 more at least.”

“I'm angry. I think we’re all angry about what happened and how it happened,” Paglia said.

He thinks the bad publicity and court action around the Cosmos cancellation will make developers a little more cautious about cancelling projects.

But despite his bad experience, “Honestly I think I would still buy pre-construction,” he said.

“More than likely to get something affordable you'll have to get into something pre-construction.”

***

Carla Gravina bought a pre-construction bungalow loft in Tottenham in 2015. She sold her house in Vaughan and planned to make the August 2016 move to the town south of Barrie her last.

But when her nephew asked her to accompany him to the third tower release of Cosmos condos in September 2016, Gravina went along.

She loved the location and the building’s amenities, and decided to buy with an eye to getting a good price on the Tottenham place when the Vaughan condo was ready for occupancy around 2020, where it would be a base from which she could fly south in the winter when she retires.

When Cosmos was cancelled, she said it felt “like the blood moved from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet.”

“The hope was to move back into the GTA without having to spend $2 million on a tiny home,” said Gravina. “I refuse to buy a 500-square-foot something for $600,000. I can’t fathom that.”

Gravina knows that living in a house mortgage free puts her a better position than some first-time home buyers in Cosmos, who have been “devastated.”

But living in Tottenham isn’t her dream. She finds it a gruelling 90-minute rush hour commute to her office near Victoria Park Ave. and Sheppard Ave. E.

“During the winter months, before I leave my home, I have to plan for weather. I have an overnight bag in my car at all times so that if the weather is bad, I will not travel north on the 400 highway and just stay where I am for the night. Because I have two dogs, I also need to plan for them -- take them with me or figure out how to get them looked after if I’m stuck in Toronto,” she said.

Her company allows her to work from home four days a week so she only has to do the drive once but, she said, “I’m basically in a house by myself and working on the telephone.”

That Vaughan is allowing Liberty to build adjacent to the Cosmos site, is galling, she said.

August 17, 2018 -- As the municipal elections taking place across the GTA on October 22 fast approach, TREB is working with the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) to pressure election candidates to support effective housing policy choices.BILD represents nearly 1,500 residential and commercial building, land development and professional renovation industry members in the Greater Toronto Area.It is no secret that the GTA is experiencing an ongoing shortage of housing supply. A combination of factors, including the impact of government regulations and policies, is also slowing the pace of construction of new homes and having a negative impact on supply and affordability. Compared to all other levels of government, municipalities have the most direct influence over where new housing will go, what type it will be, the number of homes built and pace of building. On October 22, municipal elections will be held across the GTA. As part of this year's elections, BILD is running a non-partisan campaign across all the municipalities of the GTA to highlight the importance of policies and actions that can increase housing supply and have a positive impact on affordability. TREB will also be launching a similar campaign shortly.You can show your support on this important issue and help make the 2018 GTA municipal elections the "housing elections." Together we can lay the groundwork for effective housing policy and choices with future municipal councils. Take a minute to learn more about the BILD campaign here.You can also show your support for the BILD campaign by taking one (or all) of the following actions below:Step 1Take two minutes and send an email to your candidates for municipal council and mayor.

In the 32 years since Promenade Mall opened on Bathurst Street in Vaughan, north of Toronto’s city limit, both the retail landscape and demand for suburban land has changed. The 2017 departure of bankrupt anchor tenant Sears, which occupied almost 20% of the mall’s space, was a further blow to the mall’s already declining traffic. Now, a redevelopment proposal looks to create an architectural centrepiece, while making the mall both less auto-centric and more transit and pedestrian-oriented, and introducing significant new residential density steps from the revitalized shopping centre.Shortly before Sears' bankruptcy filing, the property was acquired by Liberty Development, who are now advancing redevelopment plans. The Phase 1 Plan that was just submitted to the City of Vaughan contemplates modernization and expansion of the existing mall, physical improvements for existing retail tenants, and an increase in the number of potential shoppers. While some of this intensification is proposed through alterations to the existing mall, the bulk of the changes would involve building out of the sea of surface parking that currently encircles the property.Designed by WZMH Architects, the first phase of the plan includes three residential apartment towers with heights of 28, 30, and 35 storeys, as well as a 28-storey, mixed-use building containing offices and a hotel, with a combined gross floor area of 144,613 square metres. The first phase would involve the demolition of 18,756 square metres of existing 89,479 square metres of space space in the south and east portions of the mall, while adding 15,773 square metres of new retail space.The three proposed residential towers would contain a total of 1,066 units. The first two would respectively rise 35 and 30 storeys from a shared six-storey podium occupying the current footprint of the former Sears space. Their proposed total unit count is 748, including 363 one-bedroom units, 337 two-bedroom units, and 48 three-bedroom units. To the north of the existing mall entrance, the third residential tower is proposed to rise 28 storeys and contain 318 residential units, including 265 one-bedroom units and 53 two-bedroom units. The combined hotel and office building, would house 24,392 square metres of office uses and 15,203 square metres of hotel space, spread across 156 suites.Significant public realm improvements are also on tap for the site. Landscape architects Schollen & Company have devised a plan that creates a pedestrian-friendly gateway plaza to the site's Bathurst Street frontage, an outdoor amphitheatre at the west end of the property, and a pedestrianized north-south High Street fronted by commercial uses.

As Torontonians tally flood damage triggered by Tuesday’s rainstorm, a city official says such increasingly frequent deluges will beat a drainage system with pipes more than a century old.

“The numbers we’re talking about in terms of rainfall were absolutely astronomical in a very short period of time,” Frank Quarisa, acting general manager for Toronto Water, told the Star Thursday.

Workers clear drains along a stormwater channel near Wilson Ave. and Jane St. in the wake of Tuesday’s flash flood.

“We’re talking about overland flooding--water that didn’t even make its way to the sewers in many cases and eventually it made it to the storm sewers after having flooded out street areas ...

“We’re talking rainfall levels in these core areas of the city far in excess of what any kind of infrastructure that we have in the ground, or even the road infrastructure, can handle.”

The intense storm forced occupants of a floating car to swim for safety, trapped men in an elevator with water rising to their necks until swimming police officers rescued them, turned condo parking lots into raging rivers and sent streetcar passengers paddling out through sewage-laden runoff.

The city does fix failing infrastructure, but replacing--as a precaution--pipes as old as 120 years buried deep beneath busy streets is “huge in terms of dollar value and disruption,” Quarisa said, so “you have to come up with adaptive measures to get around it, ways to deal with that storm water that makes its way to the sewers.”

Most of Toronto’s sewers are combined, meaning in heavy rainfall runoff mixes with sewage from homes and businesses, and often spills into waterways or backs up into basements.

The “adaptive” measures include Toronto’s wet weather flow master plan, to improve water quality along shorelines; a subsidy program offering up to $3,400 per home to cover most of the cost of specified basement floodproofing devices; and fees for businesses discharging heavily polluted water.

During a Wednesday re-election campaign stop, Mayor John Tory touted his administration’s record on flood-proofing projects, saying efforts totalling hundreds of millions of dollars are “robust” enough to deal with increasingly intense storms as the climate changes.

No project “has been slowed down or delayed or postponed or cancelled or not proceeded with because of lack of money,” Tory told reporters.

His administration’s critics on Toronto council have, however, pushed in vain during Tory’s mayoral tenure, and Rob Ford’s before him, to accelerate the programs, and to establish a new stormwater fee on homes and businesses with large hard surfaces causing excess runoff.

“If we are going to be prepared for the ongoing extreme weather events that come with climate changes, the basement flood program has to be expedited,” along with efforts to decrease shoreline pollution from overflowing sewers, said Councillor Janet Davis.

Her efforts to accelerate the wet weather flow master plan by eight years â€”one option presented by city staff--and to roll out more quickly the basement flooding protection program have failed to get majority support.

Last year council, with Tory’s support. shelved a city staff recommendation to develop a stormwater fee, like those charged by Mississauga and other Ontario cities, paid by property owners with the largest hard surfaces, generating the most runoff.

While Tory noted the fee would not have increased total revenue, Layton said it would have created an incentive for large mall operators and developers to “tear up pavement and put back vegetation” to reduce runoff--an incentive absent now when water usage determines their fees.

Advocates also say a stormwater fee--branded a “roof tax” by Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti and then-former councillor Doug Ford, who is now premier--could have been fine-tuned to ensure fairness before being hiked in future years to boost revenues to flood-proof Toronto.

“We’re not saying we won’t have floods, but the reality is the more storm water we can keep out of the sewer, the better for everyone,” Layton said.

Councillor Jaye Robinson, Tory’s appointed public works chair, was not available for an interview but said in a statement: “The City of Toronto has a fully funded, comprehensive storm water management system,” and Toronto Water’s 10-year capital plan dedicates more than $3 billion to be spent on storm water management by 2026, including roughly $1.55 billion on the basement flooding protection program.

“Over the last three years, the city has spent over $295 million on storm water management. Improving the City of Toronto’s resiliency to extreme weather events remains a top priority at city hall.”